[TUHS] Re: FreeBSD kernel not OK?

On Sat, Mar 09, 2024 at 11:16:33AM +1100, Alexis wrote: You *can* use Wayland, but all of these Desktop systems work quite well with X11. Development of X11 is essentially stopped, but the hardware interface for 2D graphics is stable, so that's not a problem. I'm still using X11 because there are some shortcomings still with Wayland. For example, support for mouse acceleartion isn't there, and that's a real issue for me when I'm trying to work while on a walkstation. As far as what I'm using, my home desktop system is runing Desktop on one screen. My other screen is switches back and forth between using ChromeOS (so I can connect to Gogle's corp systems when I'm working from home), and my laptop system, which is a 15" Macbook Air (MBA). I use the MBA because the Apple Silicon's battery life is amazing. I will run Linux in a VM using Parallels, and even running Linux in a VM, the barry lifetime is much better than, say, using a Dell XPS 13 laptop --- this with a display on the MBA, which is handy as my eyes have gotten older. This also allows me to do Linux kernel development for ARM as well as x86, which is certainly nice since ARM VM's on hyperscale cloud systems definitely has some appealing price/performance advantages. As far as Systemd is concerned, yes, it's kinda awful. On the other hand, it enables a certain amount of automation when you hot-plug devices or insert an SD Card. This kind of conveience and user experience is there with a MacOS, and while I *can* run "sudo mount" when I insert a device, it is nice to be able to just plug in a SSD or SD card, and have things Just Work(tm). And, it might not surprise you that the systemd developers essentially ripped off its design from MacOS. So yeah, I find systemd annoying, but at least for me, it rarely gets in my way, and the sort of thing that makes me annoyed when I'm trying to how things work on MacOS (which admittedly is relatively rare), is consistent with the kind of annoyance I've run into with Debian. So while I have not been fond of Systemd's design and archiecture, if I don't look close all that closely of the sausage factory, it's fine, or at least, no worse than MacOS. BTW, the integration between MacOS and Linux running under Parallels is pretty clean. I can run offlineimap and mutt using MacOS when I'm reading e-mail, but unfortunately, MacOS's postfix mailer is incompatible with MIT's authentication infrastructure, and I haven't been able to make it work. So when I need to actually reply to e-mail, or compose e-mails, I run mutt in Parallels VM, and the Maildir directory in my homedir in MacOS is shared with the Debian Linux running in the Parallels VMM, and postfix running there works just *fine*. I'm sure that I could eventually figure out how to overwrite the MacOS-provided Postfix with one that is approprately configured, but then it would get overwritten every time I upgrade MacOS, and running Postfix under Linux is pretty seamless. That's one of the advantages of running MacOS and Linux on the MBA; I get the best of both worlds. Cheers, - Ted P.S. And of course, things like TurboTax and Lightroom only run on MacOS or Windows --- and while I used to have a secondary laptop with Windows for those applications, with the MBA, I can use a single laptop for travelling and for applications not availabe on Linux or *BSD.